Floppy or flexible magnetic disks are utilized widely as mass memories for personal computers, word processors and the like. Currently, the floppy disks of 8 or 51/4 inch outside diameters are most popular, however, disks of other sizes may also come into use. In addition to different outside diameters, such floppy disks have different center hole sizes and different recording track density formats. For example, 48 or 96 tracks per inch (TPI) are industry standards for the 51/4 inch floppy disks. Such floppy disks are commercially available from various manufacturers, and there can also be slight manufacturing variances between the disks from different manufacturers. It will therefore be appreciated that there are several variables associated with floppy disks and that the number of variables will increase with the expected development of other disks for further applications of such magnetic storage devices.
The transfer of data to and from such floppy disks is accomplished by means of drives incorporating electronic read/write heads. Such drives are commerically available from various manufacturers, and each in turn is somewhat different and usually requires slightly different alignment and positioning with respect to the disks for proper operation. In addition to the variables associated with floppy disks, there are thus several other variables associated with the read/write heads. Disks recorded on one brand or model of drive may not be compatible with another drive. This in turn leads to interchange difficulties between equipment. These variables will also increase with the growing utilization of such devices in various data processing applications.
The difficulty in obtaining compatability between different disks and drives has become an increasing problem in the industry. Heretofore, the popular approach has been to adapt a particular drive for use with a particular disk size and format. This of course leads to a proliferation of drive types, which is duplicative and unnecessarily complicated and expensive. The changeover time involved in converting a given set-up for use with another disk and format has been costly. Other problems with this prior approach include higher maintenance requirements and poor accommodation of emerging recording technologies. Heretofore, there has not been available a universal disk drive that will conveniently accept for read/write operations disks of different sizes and recording density formats.
A need has thus developed for a disk recording system incorporating a carousel with multiple read/write heads which can be selectively moved into position and aligned as necessary, and which incorporates a feed assembly adapted for use with disks of various sizes.